Ancona Ducks

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There is not much (anything really) that you can do to stop getting birds that occasionally look like Magpies. It is just the nature of the genotype. As far as Blue goes, it is incompletely dominant, so you will virtually always see it if the bird carries it. If your drake is Blue and some of your ducks are Black, you will get some Black offspring as well (which won't carry Blue). Black to Blue breeding will end up in visually 50% Black and 50% Blue offspring. Blue to Blue will result in 25% Black, 50% Blue, and 25% Silver. If only your hens carry Brown (which is sex-linked recessive and combined with Black results in Chocolate), then you won't have any Chocolate offspring unless one of your drakes carries the sex-linked recessive Brown (d/d). Unlike with hens, it is possible for a drake to carry this (the brown) and not show it in its' outward appearance (phenotype). So from the Blue to Chocolate breeding, you should end up with again 50% Black and 50% Blue presuming the drake doesn't carry brown. A lot of Anconas do though seem to carry brown, so it is certainly possibly you might get some Chocolates even from Black or Blue drake to Chocolate hen (certainly by the second generation if you keep drake offspring from the Chocolate hens). You could also get Lavenders in the second generation if you breed from two birds that both carry Blue and the drake Brown. .

Very good observations I need you on the Farm:)
 
LOL, thank you. If only I lived up there.
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And . . . The Boondockers heard from. I hope Deppe's book does well enough (top-10 gardening book of the year on Amazon) to boost interest in Anconas (for those who haven't read it, she's uber-evangelical on the subject of Anconas), and that you folks therefore find a growing market for this "sensible" (Deppe's words) breed. Enough so that, at some point, you introduce a tiered pricing system like the Holderreads, with top-quality show stock selling for a premium and otherwise healthy and to-type utility birds priced lower. Once plucked and roasted, a proper disposition of properly-colored feathers don't matter.

All this assuming, of course, that expanding your business is a goal. Some businesses only work if they're really small or really large; most businesses in between suffer the drawbacks of both poles--too small for real economies of scale, too big to just wing it through hard times.
 
I was really hoping to get Anconas this spring but we're a bit strapped for cash and I don't need 15-25 ducks. Assuming I find a job I plan on ordering mine from Cackle because I can split the order between ducks and poults and get a far more reasonable number of each.
 
From the Boondockers Farm you can get them here, we hope in two years with enough breeders we can get them out of the endangered category! We got them late in the year last year so this will be the first full year with lots of breeders in every color imaginable.
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Some from Holderreads now on our farm
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Okay, well now I want to post cute pics too!

Blue Drake named "Methusalan"
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Lightly-marked Silver Duck name "Bean"
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Pumpkin, one of our Cackle hens
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2010 hatch Chocolate hen (unnamed because she's for sale)
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The Flock - running around foraging their fav food (horse's sweet feed, LOL)
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Lavender Duck named "Vidalia"
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Three drakes (foreground - lightly marked silver, middle - lavender, background - chocolate) for sale
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Tricolor duckling (blue & black)
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Tricolor - all grown up
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Our Tricolor -lavender & chocolate - Lead Duck
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Some youngsters. We call this one "HEADS UP!!"
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Group of our ducklings
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Einstein - our lead chocolate drake- doing some yoga lol
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I recently read Carol Deppe's book section on Anconas... most of which applies to ducks in general, and not just Anconas. Anyway it's fun to have people read it and say "Oh, that's why you keep ducks!"--even though I've been telling them why for years, now that the reasons are laid out so well in her book, they believe.

My question--Deppe says that Anconas lay bigger eggs than the other good laying breeds. I have Welsh Harlequins, Golden 300s and Swedish. Their eggs are all over the place size-wise right now, probably because some are just starting to lay. But they seem to average around 75-85 grams when full sized. (Metzer's says the average weight for the Golden 100s should be 82 grams.) So what about the Anconas? What are their average egg weights? Thanks!
 

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